Zel's Fleet Blog - BX, Jag XJ-S, Sinclair C5, Mercedes 208D & 230TE, AC Model 70.

[Zelandeth]

Well that's annoying. The battery in the 107 is as flat as the proverbial pancake. Was fine yesterday.

Oh well...will pull it out and stick it on the recovery cycle on the charger and see what happens...

[CitroJim]

If you've got a PP9 kicking around Zel, that'll be enough to start it

Seriously, sadly, that's how modern batteries seem to fail now - no warning at all..

[Zelandeth]

They really don't seem to last as long as I remember them doing in years gone by either...

Speaking of coach liveries etc, this is a photo of what my aim for mine would probably be.

(That's been on my hard drive for years and I confess to not having the foggiest where I originally saved it from - probably Flickr somewhere)

Not a great photo given that it appears to have been taken in winter, so it's grey, dismal and the coach is absolutely filthy so it doesn't really look its best. Picture that though properly cleaned, with all the brightwork polished to within an inch of its life, on a sunny day and it's quite a different picture. That particular coach also has a black front bumper rather than the chromed one, entirely possibly a change due to damage in service.

Having helped look after one, I know full well how much blasted brightwork there is on a Dominant as well. Bits I remember hating: The central windscreen divider. Most notably because the metal polish is a pain to get off the windscreen rubbers, so you've got to be really careful. Probably the one that has caused me the most backache though is the fact that not only is there a chrome strip running below the windows - but there's another one that runs the entire length of the bus *above* the windows. Definitely a design decision there made by someone who never had to clean their own vehicle!

One of the big draws for me in aiming towards the Duple rather than Plaxton's offerings is that from the driver's seat I really like the low windscreen line and "floating" dash binnacle. I did somehow manage to find one in the "bus stuff" folder which had the correct Bedford instrumentation fitted. Origin again unknown I'm afraid.

Last one is a photo of my own though, taken at a show a few years back.

Technically that's actually a Duple Dominant I - though the only way you'd tell them apart from the photo is that the rear windscreen is split rather than a single piece...Most of the changes between the Mk I and II were external or forward of where I'm standing when I took that photo.

EDIT:

Quick additional...Yes, my website is currently offline. Back in 2005 when I decided to experiment with hosting it myself, I dug a 1998-2000 era 10.4Gb Seagate hard drive out of the box of random hard drives...This was an already third or fourth hand drive and had spindle bearings that sounded like they were made of gravel. The intention was for this to only be used for the initial testing.

It just failed following a power outage due to a PSU failure - and I actually think it may well have been its power supply that killed the drive. That's a little over 100,500 hours of use I got out of that old drive...can't knock that! I've no idea how many hours are actually on it, as operating hour counter in the SMART system had already rolled over so was recording garbage before I even got the thing. Then I left it running 24/7 for another 11 years!

Everything's backed up so it's no problem whatsoever - I just need to drop another drive in there tomorrow and get the OS reinstalled. That drive actually only had the OS and my personal website on it - everything else is on physically separate drives. No harm done, just means that there will be a little downtime...Because I can't be bothered faffing around with it at this time (01:38) in the morning!

A 2002 Maxtor 20Gb drive has been selected (mostly) at random from the aforementioned box of drives - let's see how many hours we can get out of that one!

[ekjdm14]

Wow, wonder how many revolutions on that drive. Quite some bit of kit to run flat out for 11 years with already worn bearings, I'd be tempted to see if there was any scope at all for a repair with that record & see how much longer it'd have run without a psu blow

[CitroJim]

That is a good life for a hard disk I had one that went on and on and on and on and then died when the server was switched off...

Zel, was that on a Linux server? I ask as generally a Linux server is much easier on hard disks than Windows servers appears to be... You never see a Linux system thrashing the disks anywhere near as much as a Windows server seems to do for a pastime...

[Zelandeth]

Yes Jim. Was still running an ancient version of Ubuntu (10.04 I think) until the drive died. I did just try to throw the current version of Debian at it - only to find that it crashes half way through the setup process. Have to assume some hardware incompatibility issue.

Will keep looking at it tomorrow and advise how things go.

As for the drive, I have a sneaking suspicion given how it's behaving that it's been in the middle of a read/write operation and suffered a head crash as a result. Still spins up, but instead of the normal head seek there are several seconds of silence followed by a single almighty clonk, at which point it spins down and attempts to power up again. I reckon it's either shredded its heads or the head positioning circuitry is utterly toasted.

[CitroJim]

That sort of failure is very familiar to me Zel... Seems how most disks of that generation died.

I once did recover a disk by carefully transplanting the platters into another identical drive with good electronics... It was a tricky old job but it enabled me to recover the data...

Could never do it now, the old eyes are well past it...

[Hell Razor5543]

My Mother recounts a tale where a University had a fire in an area where they had a computer with a Winchester drive. The cartridge was scorched, and had taken some internal damage, but there was irreplaceable data on there that was nowhere else. DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation), who had supplied the equipment, was asked to see what they could do. They explained that, because of the nature of the damage, that they could make no guarantees, but they would try. The workshop engineer repaired the damage to the circuitry, and then tried to spin the cartridge up (with the workshop manager watching). To their incredulity it spun up. They did not turn it off (they could not know if it would ever spin up again), but then attempted to recover the data. They managed to get around 98% of the data onto another cartridge (for which the University was immensely grateful), and when they shut the cartridge down it died beyond recovery.

[van ordinaire]

Zel, if we can, however briefly, get back to facsimile dealer No: plates? Sorry about the further delay, but it's myshowplates.com

I didn't PM this to you, as I thought it might be of general interest.

I think, if you want something a little bit special/different, as you work through the options, when you get to "Background" you select "design required" & that flags it up when they receive the order. Then you'll get a "proof" for approval/revision. Setting out any changes in narrative form in an e-mail can be a little tedious but works well enough OR you could phone (they're quick to answer, helpful & know their stuff).

What I did was scan my old plate (a square one, which made it easier) & sent it as an attachment.

Prices are competitive (standard plates are cheaper than Halfords!) & the p&p is off-set by being VAT free.

[Zelandeth]

Thanks Van, that will be most useful I think. No problem to scan the old plate, will just do it in a couple of slices and stitch it back together in software.

Assume they'd be able to reproduce the surround/text for the front from a scan of the rear one? Asking because the front one has already been changed for a generic one.

[van ordinaire]

Ah well, you're obviously much cleverer than I, I was lucky because, from memeory, a square plate falls within an A4 footprint - so the scanner just thought it was a document on the glass.

They produced a standard long front plate from that one scan as well, so you won't have any problem as I assume the only difference will be the background colour.
I did mention that they seemed to have a problem with mixed fonts, e.g. on my originals, the postcode was much smaller than the dealer's name, but since then I've had another pair made where I wanted one character in a non-standard font & the spacing between the two groups reduced but still more than that between characters (highly illegal - well, non-compliant BUT, so subtle that PC Plod would need the regs in one hand & a rule in t'other, whatever his suspicions about it not looking quite right) & we just exchanged e-mails & proofs 'til I was happy.

[Zelandeth]

That should be perfect Van. I'll drop them an email at some point, may well be that I can even provide the graphics they need for the text etc in advance depending on what formats they use etc. I'm no expert in graphics manipulation, but I'm reasonably competent at least! Nothing fancy will be going on here, just a passably accurate recreation of the original dealer plates really. Not even worried if they're 100% accurate, so long as they look the part - rather than obviously being something I've picked up from Halfrauds.

While it might be a while before I can afford the real thing, I decided to grace my desk with a little reminder of what hopefully lays in the longer term for my fleet...

Yes, fine, I know that particular example is actually a Volvo B58 - but they didn't have one that was listed as a Bedford, so I went with the one which had the closest livery to what I'm aiming for!

Remember I looked for one of these a few years ago and was well frustrated by the fact that nobody seemed to do a coach of this model in miniature, nice to see that's been fixed! Not the most detailed thing in the world, but absolutely perfectly passable for a 1:76 scale example.

[van ordinaire]

re the plate: might be worth working through the on-line plate designer first.
re buses (generally) you may recall my reporting seeing a Routemaster in Paignton earlier in the year; it was at the Torbay Steam Fair today, apparently it retired to Torbay in 2005, so surprised I haven't seen it before.
There was also an early Bournemouth Atlantean, the original modern bus - could not believe how old fashioned it looked.

[Zelandeth]

There was also an early Bournemouth Atlantean, the original modern bus - could not believe how old fashioned it looked.

The Leyland National falls very foul of that scenario as well! It was seen as hugely futuristic at the time of its launch (half its problem I guess!), yet doesn't half look like something from the stone age now.

Still a fantastic thing to drive if you've got one in good order though!

[CitroJim]

I love that bus model Zel

You have the same idea as me. I have loads of H Van models as an aspiration for the future